Kenya 2005 - Holiday and Wedding
Returning to the country of my birth for a cousin wedding - Hindu ceremonies in Mombasa and Nairobi, the jaan bus journey, Travellers Beach Hotel, and reflections on magical Kenya.
I grew up with a Hindu background with time in an Italian missionary school, in magical Kenya! My first 12 years were in Kenya, and many familiar things seem unworthy of being written down, but they still make me look into my own memories in Nairobi, Mombasa and the rest of Kenya. I met old relatives, friends and felt many memories that put me inside my past. This was the first visit to Kenya in several years.
Wedding
In Mombasa, I stayed at my grandad’s old, large house in town which is now painted lilac all over. In Nairobi, the jaan stayed at Nairobi Gymkhana, all flossy and busy with the ceremonial buzz. I remembered some Swahili again from the first day I landed in Nairobi, stayed a few hours with dad at our home, we had bhajias, I bought a shirt and took a local flight to Mombasa. It flooded back, the forced African styles of easy vocal clarity, unassuming, simple and direct. My uncle’s son Jay married Reshma from the Brahmin community.
In Mombasa, the groom goes through a preparatory ceremony, and at the end of it, the ladies can daub him with ochre paint, and play around with him. I happened to be around, finding my own face daubed in yellow! Jay and I met after many years (we almost grew up playing together) and we relived memories by going to the lighthouse with everyone by the rolling, deep sea, had mogo (roasted cassava) and kachri (fried cassava crisps with chilli and lemon) like we used to. It was wonderful, the nights were very hot in Mombasa. We went around everywhere before Jay and jaan took off to Nairobi, including a sailing club. The party travelled to Nairobi, where we had a raas garba the night before wedding day. The wedding was entertaining, and they can be long, often two or three hours. The maharaj presiding was funny, and for the first time, a couple of youngsters talked about the profound meaning of all the detailed parts of the Hindu wedding in English which is usually in Gujarati. One of the final parts is when the couple in a golden chain of 21 fibres walk around a fire four times for each of Nature’s elements. Each procedure in the ceremony has a basis deeply rooted in the ancient scriptures of Sanskrit texts.
The Jaan
A jaan in a Hindu wedding is the wedding party, over forty people in our case who travel with all their ceremony hoo-hahs and bags to another city and are hosted and given hospitality by the receiving family, often the bride’s. This one was mostly my aunts, uncles, cousins and every which relation I didn’t know, all totally intent on creating the maddest bus journey. We had a court case between the men and women, and gossip in Gujarati is beyond compare for its ability to go deeper and deeper into the mire. It’s the most lovely and versatile language for arguing. But it’s a way of being crazy with innocence and respect. So after my faiba smacked lipstick on some of the dozing blokes we stopped at MacKinnon Road, at a Muslim shrine where my dad always used to stop when I was little, by the Nairobi/Mombasa railway track. Everyone stops here, as its bad luck not to respect the pioneer of these parts. Jay said he wasn’t happy that a healthy guy wouldn’t work and begs instead. I took this on board, wanting to use it for brain juice in the future. The landscape is almost arid, sometimes the odd herd of zebra or wildebeest. At Makindu, we stopped for lunch at the Sikh Gurudwara, which serves all travellers food, irrespective of race or creed. This has been around for as long as I remember and is a very noble cause built and run by many donations and trustees from Kenya’s Sikh community. Outside we bought mpera, and many other nice fruits with English names that I don’t know!
The way back from Nairobi to Mombasa was about the same with its own flavour of rugged festivity - you get the picture. The bumps were bone-crunching and the journey takes a full day, one way. In the back seat of the bus I once flew straight up in the air, making a fountain of my freshly squeezed passion-fruit juice. Everywhere we stopped were beggars, many, many people who’d occasionally push at my chest to give them a few shillings. The new visitor to Kenya should be prepared for the shock of their lives at the incredible poverty that exists. C’est la vie. Imagine what it takes to be such a good, smiling person but not have food for the evening.
Travellers Beach Hotel, Mombasa
My two night foray at the Travellers Beach was a blessing, making a real holiday out of a wedding. I remember this hotel when I was little, it’s got lots of water slides made of tiles which go into blue lagoons. The beach outside is Bamburi Beach, with hawkers aplenty, ready to sell you anything, with ‘Jambo, rafiki, yes my friend’. I made friends of the madaaf (coconut) seller outside who also sold me weed and talked to a Kenyan girl about London. She thought London was a different country to the UK. I explained how much faster life was, and how everyone was into their own worlds with little time to see friends, but I don’t think she understood.
The days were spent swimming in the pool and ocean and reading on the loungers. I noticed many stray, old European men with a Kenyan woman. In the evenings by the pool bar there were often do’s like bands which played everything from Elvis to Eric Clapton (which I requested!), and these mismatched and temporary couples would take to the floor as all the others watched. I studied the looks on the faces of all the ‘innocent’ couples with much interest, not knowing what to think. The sex industry is now open in Kenya, more than before. Surprisingly, there were many workers the other way round - white women spending their holiday with local men.
The first night I had loads of vodka and lemonades after talking to an Icelandic pilot at the bar, and headed off to some club called Tembo, even though somebody told me I should go to Pirates or Bora Bora instead. I took a matatu. Something told me to strike at the heartbeat of doing things alone. I reached Tembo, realised I didn’t have that much dough, which is a bad situation in Mombasa. I watched the girls dance and there was hardly any clubbers. I had to buy two girls a drink just to talk breeze for two hours until time came for things to get busy later. Clubs start late.
Shasha in Tembo
I first watched her mesmerised, under the lights on the dance floor. She never moved from one place, and always faced the same direction while feeling everything in a Kikuyu song that was playing. Her skin was light beige, her backless dress revealed a figure that made me want to photograph these moments just for the crying memory, but I had no camera. She swayed like a palm in light breeze, absolutely gorgeous. Like a diva.
She liked my bright red shorts, and then we suddenly felt like dancing and so we went to dance, and I’ve never danced like that in my life. She was the breaking waves of the Indian Ocean and I was the shifting sand underneath. We were in a free world, we felt every rhythm of every song. I went into her straight hair and high cheekbones; I haven’t seen or felt much this beautiful in recent times. She was from Mauritius; her way was gliding, like a precious coral in calm waters. It was one of those moments when a swing to Lady in Red by Chris de Burgh would have found its most striking moment. Even the bouncer asked us to be less sensual and perhaps have a drink on the house. She came to the hotel and her sweat was like perfume, it lingers in my mind. The guards didn’t let her into the hotel, and then I thought that magic moments should just stick in memory and there was a line which I wasn’t about to cross. I sent her in a taxi to Mtwapa. I didn’t want to know anything more, this was the whole thing. I suppose this was one face in the cut diamond of a partner, which I’ve never really known.
Nairobi
A friend of my dad’s runs Gamewatcher Safaris from Nairobi which has its own eco-camp. I also visited a connection with a sauce manufacturing plant who wants to get wholesaling their sauces to the UK. I wrote nothing in particular of my city of birth, except this.
The matatus on the street mingle like ants, almost bumping into each other but not quite. Reams of people shuffle in ramshackle cars, the occasional tinted-glass Land Cruiser making a change. The dust of the road mixes with the wet dust of the sun, muttering something like an undercurrent, never seemingly known, but always erasing on sight. The food is loaded, lively, and the people even more so, and simple. A banana seller approaches me with respect, and at my slightest frown, she moves away, having read a mind in a split second. Kenyan people never seem to frown.
The Mombasa Road to Nairobi airport is long, full of industry and manufacturing. Factories of foam, rubber and tyres mingle with a fine hotel, package holiday centre and a mobile telecoms glasshouse. The people wear dancing, often overfitting clothes like what I could buy at Oxfam several sizes too big, often in darker shades of khaki. The seldom lost savanna raves its head above a fiesta of building sites. Coarse bushes, hundreds upon thousands, dance strenuously, as if afraid of the herbivorous mouth of some savanna animal. The smell of the red African mud completes a scene that makes the pupils of even the coldest eyes turn warm and wide.
The rain doesn’t come. The men at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport seem to love sitting around. They probably think about the Earth, day dreaming as quickly as they look relaxed. For this is the good life, the life aplenty - a life of servants, housekeepers and drivers. Jingles run through my ears all over the city day and night, from matatus, conversations and singing. The night air croaks excitedly, like it knows what paradise is. And the good people smile and make me wonder if my people have the most golden and chaotic hearts in the world.
I spent the last day with my dad in Nairobi; we went to the Aga Khan Gymkhana, where people were preparing for the arrival of his highness from France. I had the best peri-peri fish in remembrance for lunch. It was lush, ridiculously cheap in British money. In the afternoon, we moved around Gigiri and Muthaiga. I was partly in awe and partly scornful of the huge houses, individually designed for the mostly expats who lived here. At dinner, we went to an excellent Thai before going to the airport for the flight to London. I was overweight on luggage, but this is Kenya, and blagging my dad’s expired KLM Flying Dutchman card got me another 10 kilos. I spent time reading The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck before my eyes dropped into a black hole - and around five in the morning near Heathrow, the doldrum-yellow twinkling lights appeared and some truck took ages to tow the aeroplane into a docking bay.
The bags were late to the carousel. I could only put on an African smile as this exasperated Brit declared the reason, quite annoyed - incorrect loading from Nairobi!
Conclusion
On my first night in Nairobi, my face almost got eaten by mosquitoes, but I quickly realised the buzzing round my ears and moved to another bed. I remember the dark beach and feeling like the sand was one massive layer of coloured cotton wool. The sand was slightly bright from the night stars that were spread around like a Renaissance painting on canvas. I remember how this camel on the beach looked at me. It had large brown eyes, the most delicate, soft things that glinted with a thousand tiny sparkles. It simply looked, as if telepathically transferring some great wisdom that came from the divine.
GO TO KENYA!